Anonymously Famous

Don't Call Me Kevie

A friend's teenage daughter is teaching me and another friend Portuguese. (She did a year exchange in Brazil, and when she came back we asked for lessons. It's a win-win situation. We learn a new language, she gets to practice the language she learnt.)

Anyway, she's a pretty good teacher - and I'm not just saying that because the first thing she taught me was "I stole a poncho off a wooded Indian."*. She takes the lessons seriously and sets us homework. And TP and I walk around work randomly muttering Portuguese phrases at each other. (I have pi to 4 thousand decimal places on my shower curtain, so in the shower I have taken to saying the numbers out loud in Portuguese. It helps the numbers sink in.)

I'm never going to be a good speaker though. Maybe a good listener, definitely a good reader. But whenever I try to speak it, it feels like my tongue is running down a hill, trips on a rock and just falls arse over tea kettle all the way down an incredibly steep ravine. Half the time I honestly think my tongue is just doing whatever it feels like and I'm praying it's making actual polite words.

*Acabei de roubar um poncho de um indio de madeira, in case you were wondering. (I say this more than I should. Or makes sense in the real world.)